Life and Conditions of the People of Hindustan (1200–1550 A.D.) c4.s2.t2.3

Language: English

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As to the nature of his treatment : Amir Khusrau tries to conceal nothing from his readers. For example, he tells us frankly that he undertook to write the Qiran-us-Sa'dain in obedience to a royal command. The Sultan flattered him by calling him 'the seal of authors' and promised to give him a big reward which would free him from all worldly cares ever afterwards. The plan of the book and the scope of its treatment was defined by the royal patron.² Under the next patron, Sultan Jalal-ud-din Khalji, when the author was asked to compose a book, he felt morally stronger. He frankly told the Sultan that whenever he was inclined to drift away from historical truth in accordance with the demands of poetical conventions and the accepted standards of eulogies, he was stung by the inward reproaches of conscience. So that, he told him, he had made up his mind to adhere to truthfulness, whatever his position demanded.³ However, Amir Khusrau served a continuous succession of monarchs, Sultan Muizz-ud-din Kaiqubad, Jalal-ud-din Khalji, Ala-ud-din Khalji, and Mubarak Shah Khalji respectively, and when any honest man lives too long in courtly environments, his standards of ethical judgment usually undergo a change.

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It was perhaps due to such a reflection that poet warned his son, some time later, against following in the footsteps of his father who, as he told him, had spent the whole of his life in ‘spinning a yarn.’¹ Thus it should be remembered that Amir Khusrau often plays a double character in his writings. He is a historian without completely renouncing the office of a court poet and a courtier; and amazing as it may appear, he meets the demands of all three positions in his writngs. The Kaza'in-ul-Futuh, in particular, has a value of its own. Here the author gives a systematic account of the first fifteen years of Sultan ‘Ala-ud-din Khalji and it appears from its topographical and other details that the author was a personal witness of some at least of the scenes, even of those in the distant South. It is the only contemporary history of the period and the facts are narrated with admirable accuracy and wealth of detail.² On the whole, we can agree in our estimate of Amir Khusrau with Professor Cowell, that although his style is full of exaggeration and metaphorical description, the facts of history are given with tolerable fidelity.³ I may add here in passing that many historians of a later date have followed his version of contemporary events, without however, always acknowledging the source of their information.⁴ I am, however, concerned with Amir Khusrau in an even wider sense. I consider him pre-eminently as a historian of contemporary social life.

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This has led me to examine not only his history and historical poems but also his complete Diwan, his Kulliyat (collected poems) particularly his Matl'a-ul-anwar exposing the manners and the morals of his day, and even his voluminous and rather abstruse book on epistolography, the I'jaz-i-Khusravi. As a 'high-brow' artist or chronicler, Khusrau could have confined himself to courtly environment and association with a few cultured men of letters ; even as a social historian he could have written with the detachment of an academician like Abu'l Fazl. But Khusrau came from the people and feels at his best only when he moves among the crowd. When behaving as a courtier or as a man of letters, he is conscious of playing a part : his ascetic and puritan moods are decidedly morbid and only temporary, and he avails himself of the first opportunity to throw away these masks and morbid gloom and to start laughing and pleasing himself like other people. Nay, to assure the crowd that no amount of intellectual attainments and secular elevation can stop him from being congenial to them, he even borrows sometimes the vulgarity of the undeveloped mind, and the unrefined taste of the illiterate. When he is among common people he takes a detached view of his previous stately environments and spiritual heights and gives an honest and frank opinion about men and things, not excluding himself.

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In trying to express himself with this attitude of mind, however, he finds sometimes that plain and easily intelligible language is not altogether discreet and may involve him in trouble. This shrewdness drives him to subterfuge. He now deliberately takes to grandiloquent style, to florid and bombastic language, and to puns and puzzles ; but he must speak out his mind, as it were, to relieve his agitated and indignant soul. Thus, he takes good care to conceal his meaning in a mass of words, but is still as clear as possible if one knows his feelings and his surroundings. This is my reading of the I'jaz-i-khusravi, professedly written to demonstrate his powers of rhetoric (Balaghat), and his skill in the use of words, and to add to the existing nine styles of epistolography a tenth of his own.¹ Superficially read, ‘the documents it contains are, as usual, written in the most grandiloquent style, a very small amount of information being wrapped up in a bewildering maze of words’. But if these documents are carefully examined they yield interesting and instructive information of a varied character, besides many graphic descriptions of various social phenomena and references to manners and morals. It might be said that it is hardly proper to read into apparently disjointed phrases and uncertain epigrams meanings of social import, in any case, it does not appear scientific to draw historical references from them.

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It is true that the author is reluctant to admit anyone into his secrets but the reluctance is only apparent. The I’jaz-i-khusravi was not written at the command of a monarch, or for the benefit of a noble or those in power. It is a private document in which the spirit of the author has a free and unfettered play. The only fetters he has put upon himself are those of style, and these self-imposed restrictions are justified by the political conditions of the age. To appreciate the I’jaz-i-khusravi of Amir Khusrau, the reader will be well advised to make a detailed study of comparative literature.²